If you guessed court, congratulations. Zippo and Lorillard are now in a legal battle over the name, with Zippo insisting in a court filing in May that there are enough similarities between the two lines of business–cigarette lighters and electronic cigarettes–”to cause both actual and potential purchasers confusion or mistake, or to deceive both actual and potential purchasers.”

The battle is being fought on multiple legal fronts, and today Zippo claimed a partial victory on one of them. More on this after the jump… Read More »

New York’s Explorers’ Club has plenty to boast about: In its 110-year history, its members have made their fair share of accomplishments, including being the first people to reach the North Pole, the South Pole, the summit of Mount Everest, the deepest point in the ocean and the surface of the moon. It’s a lot of firsts.

And now, with so few of nature’s frontiers left to conquer, the Club is challenging an equally formidable foe: the world’s largest liquor company.

An exclusive New York club that counts Neil Armstrong and Theodore Roosevelt among its former members has made it clear that one name isn’t on its roster: Johnnie Walker.

A New York court ruled this week that Diageo PLC’s Johnnie Walker Explorers’ Club, a range of the blended Scotch whisky sold in duty-free stores, profited from an unsanctioned association with the 110-year-old club of the same name.

Max Mosley, a former head of the Formula One racing circuit, is now trying to redraw the lines of what counts as private on the Internet.

Mosley gained international notoriety five years ago after the defunct tabloid News of the World published an account of a sadomasochistic sex party he had with five women, calling it a “sick Nazi orgy.” (News of the World was owned by News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal.)

Mr. Mosley, who admits the party, but strongly denied the Nazi theme, has since won judgments in the UK and France that the images are a violation of personal privacy.